EP: 398 Phobetron and The Age of Monsters with Dr. Judd Burton & Doug Van Dorn

It's really important that people wrap their minds around how significant and important subversion is and how common it is. He defines subversion as the strategy of engaging yourself in an opponent's story. And then you retell that story through a new paradigm. And in the end, you take the opponent's story captive. And some people will say, oh, the Old Testament is just subverting the pagan stories. And a lot of people don't like that because they think that what that necessitates is that, well, it can't be true then. You don't need to be afraid thinking that the flood or creation is a subversion of Babylonian stories, for example, if you wanted to think that way. And then somehow think that it means it's not true. Those two things don't follow at all. Those two things don't follow at all. Enjoy the journey. The Smithsonian, if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere, was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right. Because if one person's right to bust the paradigm, it all goes back to the fallen church. And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop is just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Hermon event. Welcome to the Lord of the Rings. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. Another day in the Blurryverse. Not just another day, though, Luke. We have our dynamic duo back. Doug Van Dorn, Judd Burton. Fresh off a Stranger Theology article, he's in the house. Guys, there's no other duo in the Blurryverse like you two. I feel like that's a song. Since Judd's here, it feels very apropos. Yeah, is there a song in your heart today, Judd? Our fans have come to love. They've really come to love this song. They have, and now that you put me on the spot, I'm just thinking. do I go sad Irish lilt or do I go something harder let that percolate and I'll think of something later on see what's in your heart Burton just see what's in there you got an article that came out today Phobotron Jesus Luke and the Age of Monsters of course super cool to have both of you gentlemen in this league of extraordinary gentlemen involved with our Stranger Theology Project of course that we are doing with Dr. Joel Mutamali and you guys are in-house also in-house theologians in that and that thing, releasing articles. We've been friends for a very long time. When I was thinking about it's been so fun the last five years to... You guys were year one and you've become friends, which maybe is the best part and the best fruit of all of this. Yeah. You're loved by this community that's sprung up around this little show. I'm just grateful to have you back and excited to do this because it's always fun to have your friends even in a virtual room here where AI is listening. but it's okay they're going to get a special show today yeah jet have you picked out your song yet or you still need time we're really pushing that song i was thinking we're you know we're fresh off of january here and the day after my birthday that's the anniversary of the battle of new orleans right but arguably the most pivotal battle in the war of 1812 and since the show is all about being expeditious, I thought that maybe a little Johnny Horton might be in order. Well, in 1814 we took a little trip along with Colonel Jackson down to Monte, Mississippi. We took a little bacon and we took a little beans and we fought the bloody British in the town of New Orleans. Let's go. Oh, yeah. You know, I think most people appreciate that that Battle of New Orleans was the most important one of the battles of the War of 1812. So, yeah, pretty common knowledge, Judd. I mean, I love how that's – Yeah, let's go. All right. Proud of you, Judd. This is why we do what we do. This is so fun. Well, I'll tell you what. Let's go. All right. Let's go to the greatest book of the Bible. Get us rocking. Well, I posted something, I don't know, about a week or two ago about Doug and I having this conversation. And if you felt a tremor in the force, that's why. Yeah, I remember that. What do those tremors feel like? You know, it would be like sitting down to have a conversation with Alec Guinness dressed up as Obi-Wan Kenobi. Okay. I'll talk into that. No, Doug and I talk routinely about this sort of thing, about the use of subversion, the use of, in this case, the use of, well, the conversation started off talking about classical allusions, because Doug has actually done on Luke, and Luke's work and, of course, the Gospel of Luke and Acts. And we'll dig into that today. We'll deal with some Old Testament stuff. Basically, there are authors in both the – I'll introduce it with the New Testament. There are authors in the New Testament that have a conversancy in Greek culture and Hellenistic culture that's just a notch or two above the common use of the language so that you get people like John making these references, not always in direct reference, but certainly in the stylistic nature of their writing. They make these allusions to Hellenistic literature and style and philosophy. And what's interesting about it is, and you really get this echoed in the literature of the Church Fathers, But what's interesting about it is they're using the sort of highbrow Hellenistic methods to present the gospel message. And the genius of a lot of these guys in the New Testament is that they can not only speak to broad audiences, but they can speak to the sort of highbrow, you know, more educated audiences as well. And in the case of the Old Testament, we see this taking place with great frequency. The authors of the Old Testament are using They're taking back sacred names and sacred balls and sacred space So it's God owned them all in the first place But it's not uncommon to see titles that you might find in Ugaritic literature That are used to describe Baal Also describing Old Testament authors used to describe Yahweh The one that comes to mind is the Rider in the Clouds is a very common appellation that's given to Yahweh by Old Testament authors, and you find the same thing in the Canaanite material. And so we thought it would be interesting to talk about that today, and I know Doug is probably chomping at the bits because I think he's fresh off of teaching some of this material, if I'm not mistaken. Is that right, Doug? Well, I wouldn't say fresh anymore. It's been a couple of years since I was in Luke and a year since I was in Acts, but it's still somewhere in my mind. The conversations are fresh anyway. Yeah, they're fairly fresh. Fresh if it's like a cosmic year. It's going to happen very shortly ago, right? So can you kind of, Doug, can you kind of explain what Jed was talking about? Like that obviously when the Gospels are written, they're all written for a different reason, you know, to a different audience. So they have a different purpose, if you will, behind them, right? Telling the same story. But what you guys are saying is that within these Gospels, because they were written in Greek, so when you're saying Hellenistic, we're talking about Greek culture for those listening, right? That was the predominant culture at the time, and most people, educated people, spoke Greek or wrote in Greek. Am I correct in saying that? Right, yeah. So all four Gospels, they have a different audience in mind. Matthew is really the Gospel written to the Jews. People say that. John is fairly similar, but obviously takes a very different tack than the other three. Mark is kind of the Gospel on the run they talk about, the shortest one. And then Luke is most likely a Gentile. Most people think that he was. He spent a lot of time with Paul on his missionary journeys. And his is a gospel that he had to consult a bunch of sources, and he's actually writing to a guy named Theophilus when he opens his letter or his gospel. And so he's like, you know, I consulted all these different texts and stories and things that were circulating around so that I could get the best, absolutely best, true witness that I could. So he's probably actually consulting Mark and maybe even Matthew as well and other gospels and probably oral tradition from people like Mary and Peter and whoever else was still alive when he wrote his gospel. Yeah, and if I could just interject just a second, Doug, I'm sorry. Yeah. This is important historiographically too because it harkens back to the Greek tradition of writing history back to people like Herodotus and Thucydides. You could throw other people like Xenophon and Polybius in there too, but Herodotus and Thucydides both are very concerned and aware. They're cognizant of the kinds of things that Doug is talking about, making sure that they go to eyewitnesses and talk to this so that they can get a more complete narrative. And that's part of what I was talking about is how this graphs into the larger Hellenistic tradition because Lucas, you know, when I read this, I can see that he is very much patterning his historiography, his account of Jesus after people like Herodotus and Thucydides, who were both 5th century B.C. Greek historians. So are you saying, just so I can clarify, you're saying that the methodology, the way it's constructed or written was intentional, the way that essentially the Greek historians wrote, so he's taking the same methodology? I would say so, and I think Doug would agree with me. Yeah, probably. I mean, so skeptics like to talk about how the Gospels contradict each other. They don't contradict each other. They have different points of view and the eyewitnesses and stuff like that. One guy says a cock crows three times and one says a crow one time. Those aren't contradictions. Those are just ways that people remember the story. But when you start, especially in my view, looking at Luke, he's crafting his stories, whether it's the gospel or the many stories that he tells in Acts. These are actually one. It's actually should be read as one volume, one book. Acts is just part two of his gospel. Yeah, very much. It's the church side of what Jesus is. So he's the head and we're the bride. We're the body. He's the groom. So he has some very specific things in mind that he's trying to do, very geographical in the way that he writes those two stories. So it actually, he writes Luke and Acts to be chiastic geographically, by which I mean that he starts off the gospel of Luke in the Roman world. And then he spends all of the time of Jesus' ministry up in Galilee. And only then, when he's done with that, does he go down to Samaria. And then when he's done with that, he's in Jerusalem. And then he ascends at the very last chapter. Well, that reverses exactly in that order in Acts. So he has the ascension at the beginning of the book, and then all the disciples are in Jerusalem. And then they go out to Samaria, and then they go out to the lands of Galilee, the Gentiles. And then the end of the book ends back in Rome. And so he's telling his story through cosmic geography and also through not especially in Acts but differently in Acts because he has so many Gentile stops along the way, he's going to subvert a lot of the Greek myths as he's telling the story. He's going to do that with ancient Near Eastern myths and Jewish traditions in the Gospel of Luke because obviously he hasn't gone into the Gentile world at that point except for just a little bit when Jesus is up way north. But he's doing this deliberately because he's going to in some ways recast the stories of the peoples with the gospel in mind. I wanted to give a definition of this because I think it's important up front to talk about this idea of subversion. I really learned about this from our mutual friend Brian Godawa that Jed and I do our Iron and Myth podcast with once a month. Brian's a master storyteller and he loves the idea of subversion and he defines it several places online. And it's really important that people wrap their minds around how significant and important subversion is and how common it is. So he defines subversion as the strategy of engaging yourself in an opponent's story. And then you retell that story through a new paradigm. And in the end, you take the opponent's story captive. Interesting. That happens a lot? it happens all the time and it happens in politics especially um to just two examples um one with brian personally he was writing a draft of his what became his first novel the the noah series he was writing it on noah because he wanted to see if he could get a screenplay about noah and get hollywood to produce it well aronofsky came out with his movie on noah at the exact same time and so that completely destroyed his plan to make a movie which ended up turning in god's providence and he would write all these novels instead right but what was that aronofsky not a movie about noah all about it was complete and total subversion so you take the characters of the biblical story you take noah you take his family you take the jewish traditions of what their names were methuselah you take the idea of an ark you have the idea of god and then you twist it into whatever paradigm you want it to be. So in that case, it would be something like some sort of an ecological green lefty story with a totally different person that you read about in the Bible with Noah, a completely different kind of a God, but yet all of the acts or the events of the story are the same. Why would you do that? Because you're subverting, you're undoing the biblical story and trying to recast in your own image. People do this all the time in politics. You think about what social justice is or you think about the woke kind of cultural Marxism stuff. And what they're doing is they're really recasting what the gospel is. So instead of the gospel being salvation by faith and long through Christ alone, salvation becomes how good of works do you do to give to the poor, that kind of stuff. So that's what the gospel writers are doing. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, as a footnote to what Doug said, But it's interesting that all of that sprouts up amidst the American socialist movement and the social gospel in the late 19th and early 20th century. Complete subversion. Yeah, I mean, I think that the political liberalism is actually coming out of religious Christian liberalism that started it when they abandoned the gospel 150 years ago. Anyway, the point of that is that what they're doing is they're subverting the Christian story. and retelling it, recasting it. This happens all the time. People do it every day. And they don't even realize that that's what they're engaging in. Is this the nerdy way of they're both doing it? Obviously, the New Testament writers are doing it. Yeah. They're trying to do it back. Who wins? That's the question. It becomes the war of stories. Who's got the better story? Yeah. Right? You know, I don't know if you guys have heard this before. The way I was thinking of unfolding this was to kind of end with the Old Testament. Because when you get into stories like the creation story, Genesis 1, or the flood story, you'll hear scholars, apologists. They'll talk about how, well, the other nations have their creation stories. And, you know, there's 400 flood traditions and all that kind of stuff. And some people will say, oh, well, the Old Testament is just subverting the pagan stories. And a lot of people don't like that because they think that what that necessitates is that, well, it can't be true then. because they're just taking somebody else's story and recasting it. And what I wanted to do here today was kind of start with a New Testament and stories that are actually definitely grounded in what Luke calls real history. Show how he's subverting them. Show why he's doing it. And then say, look, there's nothing about subverting a story, especially if you have a God who is providential and sovereign over history. He can control history however he wants. And you can have a true story that nevertheless ends up subverting pagan stories. In other words, you don't need to be afraid of thinking that the flood or creation is a subversion of Babylonian stories, for example, if you wanted to think that way. And then somehow think that it means it's not true. Those two things don't follow at all. Is the methodology here or the intent in this is to retake the story or to reclaim it? Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent. That's exactly the point. How did the ancient people, they didn't have newspapers back then. How are they reading each other's works and stuff like this? How could, here's a question, Judd. How could Luke have gotten a hold of Virgil's Aeneid, for example? Well, because it was so widely disseminated. I mean, it's not that, I mean, the evidence is in the stylistic residues of his writing. And I know that you've articulated this in a number of places, but, I mean, you have to remember that the Levant is heavily Hellenized at this point. You know, sort of my introduction into the blurry sphere came through my work at Panaeus. Caesarea Philippi was a thoroughly Greco-Roman city, and it's just one example out of dozens and dozens of places Hellenized. And so having access to Homer or Hesiod or Herodotus or even some of the more recent Latin writers like Virgil and Livy would be inaccessible to somebody that had the educational means to access them. Now, I would qualify the territory that we're about to enter into with the notion that building on top of access, that these subversions actually begin on a very basic level. And Doug, you could chime in here and say yay or nay, but I think you'll see where I'm going with this. The initial subversion is a very basic one, and it's done by way of the language itself, the language that the New Testament is actually written in. The Greek didn't come out of the Levant, not directly anyway. That's another discussion. But Greek was this language that was used by the pagans, right? It was created by the pagans. And so it begins at a very basic linguistic level. That would be one of the means. Well, like I said, that's another show I'll do together. But to sort of circle back to your question, how would somebody like Luke have access? Luke, clearly a man of some degree of education, he's able to be conversant in the intellectual dialogue of the day. Clearly he could access these Greek and Latin texts. even in the Levant it would have been outside of the realm of his access because there would have been, you know, don't think about the scale of like the Library of Alexandria or Herculaneum or something like that, but there would have been small collections in these Greco-Roman cities in the Levant that he could have accessed this material. Yeah, exactly. I mean, he's going on missionary journeys with Paul earlier. So he would have gone to all these cities where they have these libraries and he would have known how to use them and access them and everything else. he was a physician after all. All right. All right. So Luke, he knows more of the fantastical worldview. He's more into the blurry verse of the ancient days. It's kind of completely. Okay. He a comic book nerd is what you saying Yeah he is Well in some ways everybody was because this was their stories This is why I think that actually in a strange way this show might not seem like it fits blurry creatures very well but I think it actually really fits it because the mythology is all about these blurry creatures that all these people believed in So here's this one example. I kind of want to go to Acts, but my head went to Luke chapter 3 when he's giving the genealogy of Jesus. It's a very different genealogy than what Matthew gives. He gives 77 names. The first seven take you up to Enoch, and then the last 70 take you from Enoch until Jesus. Now, you go, well, how in the world could that possibly be subversive? Well, if you go and you read your Enoch, your first Enoch, so this is a Jewish subversion of the story of Enoch. It talks about how when the watchers were locked away for 70 generations, they would be locked away until the judgment. Well, Enoch to Jesus, according to Luke, is 70 generations, which means that he would be subverting the idea of the judgment of the watchers by saying that Jesus, the days of Jesus is when the watchers are going to be judged in the coming of the son of God. Just a very subtle kind of a thing that if you know your divine counsel and your 70 members of the divine counsel and all that kind of stuff, it screams out at you. That's awesome. There's a case to be made for John too, wouldn't you say, Doug? Yeah, I haven't thought as deeply about John, but 100% John is being so blessed. Yeah, I spent a lot of time back when I was going through the paces in John, and he does the same thing in both his gospel and his first letter. He describes Jesus as the Word, the Word made flesh. And we can look at that. Yeah, that's right. The Word and the name and the glory, these kind of ideas that were associated with this second power in heaven figure of the Jews at the time, John is writing directly into that and saying that, Look, that which you write about in your targums and that you know and have talked about for centuries, he's here now in the flesh. That's a subversion of the way that the Jews were thinking about who the word, the Logos, is. Yeah, absolutely. And it's really kind of a double subversion because it works for the Jewish world and for the Greek world because Logos, you know, we look at that word and it's easy to translate it as a word because that's one of its meanings. But it has a philosophical resonance, too. The Greeks viewed it as the governing principle of the universe. So aligning that word with Jesus is a huge philosophical resonance within the Greek world, within any Greek audience. And that's who John is certainly writing to. So that would be a major example of John's use of subverting. And you can certainly fast forward to Revelation, and you really start to get into the blurry creature's territory at that point, with all of his usage of the beast, the Therion, and the dragon, and the cosmological elements that are, and astronomical elements that are at play in Revelation. All of that kind of imagery goes to what Doug was talking about, that everybody was a comic book nerd. They love this stuff, and that's why in a lot of ways in the context of this discussion, John's revelation is an exclamation point on the subversion that's all throughout the Bible. Yeah, that's a good point, Judd. You're reminding me of, for example, I think we did that show Wandering Stars or whatever you guys call it. And I think that I talked in there about the seven churches and how there's reason to believe that John was pinning or pegging each of those seven churches to one of the wandering stars of the sky. There's seven of them. So the sun, the moon, and then the five planets that you can see. Well, that would actually be subversion because in aligning each of these churches with one of the wandering stars, like wandering stars is not good imagery. You don't want to be a wandering star. You want to be a fixed star that does what it's supposed to do. So if you're aligning a church with a wandering star, you're saying you're acting like basically the fallen angels, and you need to knock it out, or I'm going to remove the lampstone from you. So that's subverting, I guess, both astronomy and astrology of the ancient world. It is a subversion pregnant with meaning. But it's not obvious, right? I mean, it's not to us, maybe. To us. Yeah, it's not supposed to be in your face. It's not explicit. It works much better on a subliminal level than it does on a level that you're just doing it in your face. This is actually, if you want to think about art, I don't know what you think about this, Nate. I mean, you are a Christian rock star. How many people complain about Christian music, right? Yeah. Because it's bad, crappy music. Sherwood, baby, right there. Not saying anything about Sherwood, but why is it that way? It's because it's trying to copy directly, explicitly in your face something. It's not subtle. It's not subliminal. And it does a bad job at it. Yeah. Yeah. Reminds me of those youth group T-shirts when they took the Crest logo from the toothpaste and put Christ on it. That's subversion. It's exactly what it is. but it's like tacky subversion. Okay, so what's the most complex subversion? Yeah, that kind of leads me to the things I want to do. Let me take you through a list of names in some of Luke's chapters in Acts to see how this works specifically. So let's start in Acts chapter 9. There's two people that are healed in that chapter, and this is right before Cornelius becomes the first Gentile Christian. So Peter's making his way up. They're still Jews, but it's really interesting because the two people have the name Aeneas and Tabitha. Okay, so you're like, well, who cares? So I am of the opinion that Luke very, very deliberately takes the names that he takes and he's using them subversively. So Aeneas, if you go and you look at your Greek mythology, you learn that this is the Trojan hero in Homer's Iliad who survives Troy. Okay, and he becomes the legendary hero who becomes the kind of the foundational Roman mythic hero in Virgil's story called the Aeneid, which is named after this guy, or this guy's named after him. So Aeneas escapes Troy. He goes to Italy. He becomes the ancestor of the Romans. He symbolizes Roman destiny, piety, and imperial expansion in the way that the story is told about him. But the Aeneas in Luke's story is a paralyzed, bedridden man. He's an outcast. He's weak. He's marginalized. completely the opposite of the demigod and peter heals him in jesus's name and so the whole region then because of this turns to the lord so how is that subversive well it teaches you that true power comes not from roman ideology but christ's compassion for the weak not from a demigod's heroic might and empire building but from the compassion of the gospel tabitha is interesting because she's Actually, her name means a wounded deer. And in the story of the Aeneid, Aeneas falls in love with Dedo, the queen of Carthage, who is metaphorically a wounded deer. There's all kinds of allusions to her being that in the story. So she's ultimately hunted and killed by Aeneas in the story. She becomes the collateral damage in Rome's rise as the emperor expands. Our Tabitha dies as well in the story, but she is raised from the dead. And again, many believe in the Lord because of it. So again, Rome's expansion brings death and heartbreak in the story. In fact, Virgil, he tried to take the side of these poor people as he's recasting this myth for Rome. But in our story, it's the flip of it. It's the opposite of it. The gospel is expanding like the Roman Empire, but it's doing it not through force, not through power. It's doing it through healing and compassion and the things that the gospel does. And so if you take those names and you deliberately connect two names that are found in the same story, and I have no reason to believe they're not real people. It just happened to be that Luke's like, this is going to work really well, and I'm going to recast the Aeneid story for people. You know, there's so many middlemen in the world, and they're all taking a cut. 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Head over to BlurryCreatures.com, and we even got a Blurry-branded organic tallow balms, and it's amazing tooth powder right there on our site. check out a company that aligns with our mission blurrycreatures.com check out no more yeah absolutely that's what I was going to ask I was going to ask is it he's renaming people or do you believe that like I think I personally think that that was their names that's awesome so where else do we see this because you brought up this story and we talked about we're talking about Luke but where else where else is he doing okay so do you remember when he goes into uh he goes into Galatia and he's in Lystra And when he's in Galatia at Lystra, he starts preaching or Barnabas starts preaching and Paul starts healing people. And they go, oh, Barnabas is Zeus and Paul is Hermes. OK, well, so why would you mention that? Well, it just so happens that Zeus and Hermes have a story found in Ovid's Metamorphosis where they visit mortals in Phrygia, which is a borderland of Lystra. In fact, Lystra may be the origin of where this story comes from. So Zeus and Hermes come in the likeness of men to test human hospitality, and they're rejected, but they're welcomed by one couple, and they're rewarded while the rest of the city is going to be burned and incinerated in the judgment of the two gods. So now imagine that two men clothed in human flesh are doing these crazy things just like Zeus and Hermes did, and you think that they're them, and you have this story in the back of your mind. what are you going to do? Well, so then it says, Judd, you'll like this. The people of Lystra are terrified and they start screaming out in the language of Lycos. Lycos. Yep. The idea is that they're howling like werewolves because the very place where they're at is named after the werewolf. The Lycans. Yep. That's right. So there's an interesting thing that happens with the Hermes side of this in Galatians. So Paul's sitting there healing these people, and they call him Hermes. In Galatians, he writes to the church. This would be one of the churches. He goes, don't you remember when I was so sick and I came to you and I couldn't get better? Well, what does that have to do with anything? Well, they thought he was Hermes. And he goes, we're not. I'm not Hermes. I'm a man just like you are. I'm a mortal. Don't worship me. Worship God. And so that becomes the subversion is that the apostles don't take the name Zeus and Hermes to themselves and then try and draw adoration and worship from the people. They deflect it in the exact opposite way that Zeus and Hermes in the stories did because they're trying to point not to themselves or to the gods, but to Jesus who rose from the dead. So they're subverting. He's subverting the story of Zeus and Hermes going to the nearby town from where this very thing happened, where they end up going and having this confrontation. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And this would be more of a well-known story. Obviously, they would. So that's what's so cool about it is that whether or not it was well-known everywhere in the Greek Empire, it was very well-known to those people in that particular city, which is why Luke brings the subversion up not anywhere, but in this particular place where it happened, which goes to show you that, in fact, God is orchestrating history. These people were calling them Zeus and Hermes for a reason, And so Luke goes, here, I'm going to help you see what that reason is. And I believe that the original audience, if you would have read this letter of Acts in that city in the first century, you said, oh, yeah, I know exactly what's going on there. We're 2,000 years removed, so we don't know what's happening. So we've got to go and learn about the stories. But nevertheless, it's still there. So in a way, artistic people kind of do this a lot, just like the best movie wins. you know like the chronicles of narnia versus the lord of the rings like right like gonna tell a better story you're telling a story about something else but who who tells it better right and i've heard that tolkien gave c.s lewis a little hard time because it was too easy it's too obvious but someone said that on our show recently no that's exactly right yeah tolkien didn't like the in your face stuff of c.s lewis he wanted more classic subversion but that's kind of the ancient way of doing that, right? Like, oh, you know this story. Well, we're going to tell a little better. But it's actually... Well, it's very much the ancient way. I'm fond of saying that mythology is our mother tongue and that's... I'm not being hyperbolic there. We've been storytellers and in love with storytelling since the beginning and I think that's by design. I think we were created to be like that. So, you know, the farther away that we've gotten from classical and biblical education, the farther removed we are from that in a lot of ways. So that even in church circles, myth is, it's one of those four-letter words you don't say. But these ancient audiences would have picked up on this very quickly. And to the credit of people like Luke and John, they had a talent for making this happen, for catching lightning in a bottle. So Luke reads the most comic books, and then he writes about monsters in the end times, right? Like we. John, too. Luke is telling the history in a sober way, but he's using the mythology to do it. Here's another example. There's a guy named Jason in Acts 17 in this town of Thessalonians. Well, if you know your mythology, who's Jason? He's the leader of the Argonauts. He's got some Argonauts, yeah. Not the Canadian Football League team, but the actual ones. Right. is that is that is that toronto argonauts it is uh i try to remember they're one of them but i think you're right you know don't fleece us with this story hey there he is right so that's the point right he goes to on a quest for the golden fleece um and he's doing this in it in the region of where this story happens to take place so in that story jason's a threat to the ruling order of king pelias of thessali gathers a mighty band of companions challenges the king legitimacy and he brings upheaval in Thessalonica in the story in Acts the Jews become jealous and form a mob at Jason's house and they drag Jason and some brothers before the authorities where they're accused of acting against the decree of Caesar against the king just like Jason and the Argonauts it's like the whole story is replaying through the name Jason so if you know to look for the names and And you're like, oh, why does it talk about the twin Pollux on the front of the boat in the last chapter of Acts? Why should I care about that, Luke? Who cares about the hood ornaments on the front of the car? Well it because he recasting that story of the twin gods both in their Greek and Roman form because the roman were romulus and remus this is a boat headed toward rome they supposed to be the protectors of the sea and they can't protect them from a from a boat sinking but god ends up intervening there's a viper bite these the natives on the island think that that paul has is a murderer and so they think that dyke the goddess of justice is going to punish him but no he survives the the viper bite like that's genesis 3 15 stuff right there overthrowing dyke showing that the twins are not the ones who are going to protect him but his god is the one that he's come to tell them about even if it's on accident and fate because the boat happens to crash it for the winter is the the overarching part of this is that luke isn't isn't like stretching or he's making these things fit like god and his sovereignty yeah allowing these same things to happen these same areas in order to prove really if we talk about like put our blurry goggles on to show his dominion dominance over the lower g gods of these pantheons right of these pagan pantheons which we would we would probably say are the either the genesis the angels of genesis 6 or the rebellious sons of god of deuteronomy 32 and so he's saying watch this like these people that are gonna are gonna show up in my story in these places. Luke's going to write it down, but I'm going to handpick all of this to weave a story that the Hellenistic folks, the Greeks, would understand providentially, not Luke being like, we're going to rename these people to the story. Exactly. That's exactly the point. So in the chapter before that, chapter 27, there's a guy named Julius who comes up. He happens to be an important guy that ends up saving Paul. okay well Julius that can't possibly be a coincidental name that's Julius Caesar so this Julius ends up acting exactly the opposite of the way Julius Caesar does why would you do that? because the whole point is that Paul is headed to Rome where he's going to give the gospel to the Romans the Roman Caesars he has appealed to Caesar so how interesting that there's a guy that happens to have the very same name as the first Caesar I'm just going to use that. I'm going to tell you, like, there's 276 people on this boat. And Luke tells you that name. Why would you tell me that? Because it's fitting the subversion of how I'm overthrowing. I'm trying to show, ultimately, what Luke is doing in Acts is trying to show that the gospel, the kingdom of God, is advancing just like the Roman Empire. But it's doing it exactly the opposite way that the Roman Empire does it. and I'm going to use your very myths against you through the history that God has ordained through what has taken place through these apostles to tell you that story I mean you think about all the stories seem to have that undertone I mean David and Goliath probably the most popular biblical story at least top five right small guy beats the big guy the exact opposite way you think it would happen I'm trying to think of more Or like stuttering Moses has to be the leader of the people. I don't know. It seems like it's all over the place, right? Yeah, the first will be last, the last will be first is really what you're talking about there, right? But it feels like it's counter to what the other tribes or the other countries or the other gods would do it. They would do it this way, and it's the exact opposite. And it's the least likely way that it could actually work. shepherd boy becomes king you know whatever it's like how you know that's always the language it's used to prove the other gods are silly foolish it's a humbling way of the least likely to to pull it off but anyway there's a super there's a super interesting one in acts 23 through numbers so not names but numbers the number of 40 70 and 200 appear and those are the only numbers there you're like well why why would you why would you tell me that well it starts off with the sadducees this is the part of the leaders of the sanhedrin which is the the group of 70 that are trying to undo everything paul has done and luke tells us specifically that these people don't believe in angels okay thanks for thanks for sharing that factoid why do i care okay so 40 of these jews bind themselves with an oath to destroy Paul. Well, that's the language of the watchers in Enoch 6. When the 200 watchers come down and bind themselves with an oath to take women against the decree of God. Well, the number 200 shows up along with the number 70. So 70 is that divine counsel number again. and 200 is the number of watchers what just so happens that you get 200 soldiers, 200 spearmen 70 horsemen that are brought in to protect Paul and to swish him out of the city so that the Sanhedrin can't kill him so it becomes a complete subversion where these Sanhedrin who deny the very existence of watchers are acting exactly like the watchers And meanwhile, the numbers associated with the watchers become the numbers that saved Paul, the exact opposite of what the watchers were doing. The whole thing flips on its head. I mean, that's a pretty cool one. It is a cool one. All of this that we're talking about here is something that the church fathers also use. And again, that could be an entirely other show, but it's a mechanism that they use as well. And I have to think on some level that once the pagan philosophers actually begin to debate a lot of these guys, they don't expect to be matched and in many cases, in nearly all cases, beaten at their own game because a lot of the church fathers were graduates of the same kind of schools and academies that the pagan philosophers were. And so this is a very subversion. It's really part of our legacy as Christians. And if I could, if I could bring it back to John for just a minute and to kind of bring things back full circle to today, One of the interesting things about John's literature is his use of Greek philosophical dualism. He uses a lot of these binary opposites in his writing, like juxtaposing the light and the dark and truth and lies and good and evil. And in the Greek mind, that was sort of the big cosmological struggle is that you've got a scale, a balance. and good and evil are equally pitted against each other. You see this echoed in older traditions like Zoroastrianism and Taoism in the Far East. So it's not something that's just unique to the Greeks. Yeah, yin-yang, that kind of thing, right? Yeah, exactly. It's the same kind of thing. And again, this is something that Doug and I have talked about ad nauseum over the last couple of years. Well, let me finish with John first. John, you know, seemingly, if you look at all these binary opposites that he used, you know, groups would pick up on that. You know, he said, oh, you know, this is the great cosmological struggle against these two equal and opposing forces. But John goes on further, you know, and downplays the darkness. He downplays the lies. He downplays the other end of what would seemingly be a binary opposite, you know, a pole. And that the light overcomes, the truth overcomes. And by equating all of this, by putting it in the same camp as Jesus and God, the Father, Yahweh, and the Holy Spirit, he's showing that this philosophical dualism is problematic. it's it's not how the universe is an evil doesn't triumph over good well if you look at you know today in in society this sort of dialectic cognitive dissonance is just rampant we're so polarized and you know to the point that you know we're like how did we get here how did how did we end up you know so divided as a society the answer to this dialectical problem dialectics is an idea that was popularized, not invented, but popularized by a philosopher, German philosopher, by the name of Hegel, who was a huge influence, probably the main influence on Karl Marx and socialism and communism. But the idea behind dialecticalism is you have one idea, the thesis, opposed by the antithesis, and eventually it's all worked out into a synthesis, and the synthesis becomes the new antithesis. Well, these are ideas, again, that go back to Greek philosophical dualism and, interestingly enough, hermetic magic. Hegel himself was a student of hermetic magic and the Kabbalah. And here we are today, you know, as a society stuck in the same kind of a trap. It's, you know, as I said, Doug and I have talked about this. It's a kind of, you know, on the surface, it doesn't look magical. It just looks like the natural organic flow of political opposition, but it's not. It's something far more menacing and far more demonic. It's a spell in a lot of ways because it's infected the very language that we use. It's an open discourse today. And so I think by going back and looking at John's not only use of but overturning of subversion of this kind of dualism, we can take heart and apply that to the situation that we see rampant in our own society today. The triumph of good over evil, that we're not dealing with binary opposites. We're not dealing with dualism. It's definitely a dualistic problem. but the solution is not a political one. It's not even necessarily a cultural one. It's a supernatural one. There's a funny verse, to me funny, in Ecclesiastes. This is always kind of my life verse. I'll probably offend some of your heroes, I don't know. But Ecclesiastes tend to the heart of the wise and clients to the right, but the heart of the fool to the left. And I always thought, I always kind of made a joke of that, But when I was preaching Ecclesiastes a few years back, I wanted to actually look and see, like, could there be actually something behind that? Well, you go and you look at the surrounding context and you find that it's deeply political and that's the center of a long discussion. And then you come to what Judd just talked about with the French Revolution and Hegel. French Revolution was like it was a subversion of the American Revolution. It was the opposite kind of revolution of what we had. And deliberately on purpose, those French leftists that were following Hegel subverted right and left on purpose. A whole paper that I have up on academia that people can go read. And this is what reminded me of it, Judge. You said that politics isn't the solution. And I completely agree. And that's exactly why Luke is subverting the myths of his day. But for Hegel and for the French revolutionaries, politics was the solution. And they subverted the normal way of thinking about left and right. And all of a sudden, for the first time in human history, right becomes an evil thing and left becomes the good thing. Very fascinating. And we are the inheritors of that politically right now. And almost within the same time frame because the fomenters of the French Revolution were Jacobins. And the Jacobins were, there's a document trail that proves this. It's not a fantasy, but the Jacobins were Illuminists. They were all students of the Bavarian Illuminati. And the French, under an ambassador by the name of Jeunet, tried to recruit amongst the early Republic Americans, you know, right off of the American Revolution. Their logic was like, well, we helped you out in the American Revolution. we need some help with our revolution. And Washington, to his credit, would not countenance American recruits to fight on the side of the Jacobins of the French Revolution because he knew that they were Illuminists. And, in fact, he makes reference to this in a letter just before his death that a minister, a Baptist minister, had written to him, you know, warning him about the Illuminati in the United States And Washington fires back and says, basically, I've known about the Jacobins and the Illuminists because they have been trying to recruit from the Americans during the course of the French Revolution. So, yeah, we inherit these problems in a very direct sort of way. And they're deeply tied, like you said, to supernatural recasting of stories that Christians are supposed to hold dear to themselves. You guys know the story of Jesus calming the storm? Yeah. This is in Luke's gospel. So it talks about how in Luke, he calms the sea and the storm on the Sea of Galilee. So the Sea of Galilee is considered the abode of El, Shemiyaza, Molech, Satan, whoever you want to call him. And he has two sons. One is named Yam and one is named Baal in the Ugaritic stories, the myths of the ancient Near East. Well, it just so happens that Yam means sea and Baal is the storm god. So when Jesus is calming the sea there and stilling the storm, he's actually showing his authority subversively over the gods, Yom and Baal, without any struggle, without any battle. In fact, he falls asleep during the storm. This is how little it means to him. Right after that, he goes to the other side of the lake, which is now the demonic side, right? This is where the guy Legion is with these tombs and these pigs and all this kind of stuff. And he reclaims that territory as sacred geography for the gospel. And the whole point then is that these legion of demons, these entities that are the offspring of the watchers and the women of Genesis 6, say don't throw cast us into the sea the very thing that jesus has just showed authority over throw us into the pigs so he throws them into the pigs and then the pigs go into the sea and drown them the whole thing is like a it's a subversion of the myth of the flood of the story i put i don't put myth in a bad way there but the story of the flood and and the watchers and these false gods that have fallen into sin. And Luke is saying Jesus is the one who has come to judge them. He's the one who is greater than them. They have no power over him. And he's doing this throughout Luke and Acts. And the key is that it all really happened. This all happened. This is actual events. That's why Luke tells you at the beginning of both books that, look, I spent a lot of time looking into this to make sure that I could give you the most accurate, orderly account of what happened how much are the human stories sometimes it feels like the principalities and powers are raining over us and playing us like a video game but how much are some of these stories like a direct affront in their world and their cosmic understanding of what's going on we just think oh jesus is on a boat hanging out with his buddies just like a normal human story but to the gods watching this story they're like dude he just calmed the waters are they watching the humans do this you know i'm saying like it's like a fourth dimensional movie three-dimensional movie we we sort of forget that these other characters are watching this story play yeah well remember when i was on your when when i talked about the transfiguration when i was out there yeah and i suggested that that's a replay it's actually a subversion of the bail cycle where l calls uh yom the beloved son and then Baal gets really mad and goes tries to kill him and that's what I suggested is actually happening with the fall of Satan that I think that the fall of Satan there in Luke 10 is referring to Satan falling like lightning like the storm god in rage because he just saw what happened on the mound of transfiguration so I think that that kind of answers your question that I think that these these characters are watching this whole thing play out and then when the gospels are being written, they know full well what's going on, just as every bit as much as Legion knew who Jesus was. Remember, he's the one, it's him who called me, you're the son of God. Don't cast us into the, well, what is the son of God language matter? Well, that's the, that's that language of the sons of God that comes straight out of the Deuteronomy 32, 8 and 9 stuff that Jesus is showing that he's the one who has the true power over all of them. So, yeah, I think they know full well what's the land. They're so mad about it. Exactly. You know they've got to be wincing the whole time watching all this happen. I mean, literally with Jesus' every step, particularly when he's in Galilee and Upper Galilee and Bashan, the land of the serpent, with every step he takes, he's literally fulfilling the Genesis 3.15 prophecy. so you know they've got to they've just got to be writhing you know watching all this you know play out in real time and then especially after the fact right where um where where they didn't know everything exactly as it was going down when it happened but now they go back and they read the scripture just like the devil read the scripture with jesus at the temptation they know what's in the bible yeah yeah they all know our exorcism stories right they know they can quote anything they want yeah so they figured they figured it out after the fact which is why i think that the the dragon in Revelation 12 is so brutal against the woman for that period of time that she's in the desert. I think you're absolutely right. I couldn't agree more. Jesus' whole arrival on the scene must have had such a whiplash effect on the entire demonic hierarchy that it was, especially in hindsight, they're looking at all this, and it's a desperation game. And I think to some degree that's quantifiable, even in our own times, we start to see a lot of events unfolding in our world, and there seems to be this ramping up, you know, movement towards the singularity. Our Bill used to call it the quickening. Luke wrote his gospel as a chiasm. We've talked to you about Revelation. Right. Where John wrote. Right. John and Revelation together. I wrote an entire book with John in Revelation being a chiasm. Right. What's the intent behind that? Because I think what I'm blown away with by all this is I think sometimes we forget, not we forget, but we just underestimate the brilliance of Scripture. Yeah, yeah. And the way that this was written, whether it be subversions of the myth stories in the New Testament, in the Greek culture, in the Hellenistic culture, where we look at the Old Testament and the subversion of the Babylonian, Canaanite stories and retelling of that. But when you writing it as a chiasm I mean is it let me ask why you believe that it written that way I give you two reasons The first one is the practical thing that is very interesting that when you understand that the beginning and end of Luke and Acts are a matchup in the Roman world, well, you can go and read that story of the shipwreck and then Paul ending in Rome. You can read that together with the infancy gospel narratives, and you can start to pick up like, okay, so there was a snake bite at the end of the story, But at the beginning of the story, you have the seed of the woman who's being born. So you can read those stories together, and you can do that all the way through the two books. And the easiest place to see it is obviously the end of Luke, the beginning of Acts, where you have the ascension in both places, and then Jerusalem after that and before that in both places. So it's actually working very, very much like John in Revelation. The second thing is that this is just a theory. Bantered it around in my head quite a bit. If you take the geography of the Roman world and you think about how Jerusalem is always up in the Bible because it's up in the mountains. Well, you have this long trek up to the top of a mountain with an ascent happening on the top of the mountain. And then a descent from the top of the mountain back down to the world. And really what he's doing, if you take a chiasm, which looks like an arrow when you put it horizontally, if you flip it 90 degrees vertically, it looks like a mountain. And so literally, chiastically, it's a mountain, but also geographically, it's a mountain and also cosmologically, it's a mountain because Jesus ascends into heaven at the top of the mountain. And so I think that what Luke is framing the two books as is that he is showing that this is the true divine council coming back down to earth. The reconstitution of that council will now take place starting at Babel with the 70 nations being reached, which is the mission of the church. And so it's kind of the reframing of that whole Mike Heiser worldview of the Divine Council and how he talks about it in the unseen realm. Kind of the biggest thing I think people miss about that book because they're so fascinated about these other things in that book. I don't blame them. What they miss is that his whole point is that, look, guys, as Christians, we are going to judge angels. We are the ones who become the sons of God to replace those beings on the divine council, which is why I think Luke cares about the Watcher story subversively throughout Luke and Acts. It's why he frames it the way he does so that we can get this picture in our heads, obviously very subliminally. And I actually think, by the way, I think there's 70 units in Luke and Acts total, 35 in each book. So that only just kind of reinforces it. Literary units. I can't prove it yet, and I probably never will because I don't have time to do it. But that's my theory, is that he's actually weaving together his book to look like the very point that he's trying to make at the end, which is that the church becomes the divine council as we go back down off the mountain, now out to the ends of the earth to reach people for the gospel. It's a cosmic mountain. It's a cosmic mountain, 100%. It's a cosmic moon. It's a cosmic moon. It's a cosmic moon. that's incredible because Christ does ascend at the top of the mountain yes I love these conversations because it just makes you look at the scripture it's the brilliance you can't will this really into existence in some ways right this is divine and then the the ways that the myths of the of the gods of the nations are subverted and triumphed over is And we didn't talk a ton about the Old Testament, but you think about, I think immediately about the Exodus and the plagues and Yahweh being like, Watch me show how I own and how I'm bigger and better and badder than all of your gods of Egypt. We're going to do this right now. I'm going to do it. And then he does it. And it's not just like, here's ten bad things. It's like, no, I'm actually going to show my sovereignty over all of your gods. And in the same way, but different, Luke's doing the same thing with the myths and the gods of the Greek Empire. And not just them, but even the Caesars themselves, right? Yes, who are gods, right? Temples, there are temples erected to them. That's true. They're god kings. So is this thing you sent over? Yeah, so that's my visualization. I don't know if you could put that somewhere if you want to, But that's my visualization of how Luke-Acts works together with 70 different units, 35 on each side, ending in that purple one at the top of the mountain. So the Bible is way more fun when you actually learn what it actually means rather than you make it mean what you want it to mean. Let's go. Yeah. On tips is theology. These are the conversations that are so fascinating and cool once you strip back the layers or the top layers of the story to see what's going on. Like even, you know, you're a linguistic guy, Jed, right? You're all about the languages. And when you start to look at the way that the writers used the words and used the language and then also used the structure, right, whether it be a subversion or a chiasm or these ways they were using them to say but also show the supremacy of Christ. Brian Goddowell tells us, he talks a lot in his Hollywood Worldviews book about subversion. one of the funnest ones I think that will help people is Superman. What is Superman? Well, originally, and you can retell Superman, you can recast him and make him an anti-bizarro Superman if you want to, which is probably more the direction that postmodern retelling of Superman goes. But Superman is this savior figure, hero, son of L, by the way, who comes to save people. like Superman is was written as a type of Christ figure. That was its purpose. I think Brian would argue that. And why would you do that? Well, it's to kind of very subtly tell the story of Christ. Now, now somebody could say, well, that's he's actually taking the place of Christ and he becomes an antichrist figure because he's not Jesus. Well, you could argue that, I suppose. But, you know, however you want to see it. The point is there's reasons why he's the son of L as an example. that just doesn't come out of nowhere so maybe he's Baal maybe you could argue he's actually Baal he's actually Satan but my point is we do this all the time we're humans humans do subversion all the time and all we're trying to do is familiarize people with the idea of it and how it's actually found in the Bible and how it's pretty cool because you're Superman I have to bring up the closing end of the closing scene Dark Knight. It's the same sort of thing. The Joker and Two-Face and all the evil seems to have triumphed. Batman, essentially, spoiler alert, takes all the blame. He says, tells Commissioner Gordon, pin it all on me. Let me take the heat. It's this poignant Christ-like moment in the Batman mythology. We do it all the time. It's very much an artistic and literary thing. It's like the Matrix. I think about the Matrix. Yeah, 100%. I was just thinking the same. Yeah. The names, Neo, Trinity. Yeah. It's interesting because it's like it is the greatest story ever told. And so we as humans just retell it and repurpose it. The myth that is true. And so the pagans flip the story on its head and reverse it. And so what Christianity is about is trying to tell you the real myth the right way. And sometimes that means, in my opinion, I guess it would mean like if the original creation story is the biblical story, it's what happened. Then the pagans subverted that story and told their own. And so what the Bible is doing is it's resubverting back to the truth. There's no reason to think that the pagans created the story and then the Jews just sort of like, well, we don't have a story of our own. So I guess we'll just take theirs and we'll twist it. That's not the way the Bible comes across. yeah because a lot of people they they say oh yeah the biblical writers just ripped off the the other writers of their time right and they they are doing that to a degree i'm like that's the point here is to try and say look subversion is not a bad thing it's actually a great thing it's actually a great thing to retell a babylonian when you're if you're ezekiel or something like that you're going to read and you're going to try and tell your creation story in babylon where you're in exile. Let me tell it to you in a way that you can understand. I'm going to subvert your story. That doesn't mean that the story is not true. It's interesting that Jesus always says, you've heard it said but I say to you. He's subverting the law. He's subverting their tradition. That's exactly what he's doing. What better way to tell a people group the truth than to tell them a story they know? Because you've met them where they are. When Paul's talking about, to the Jew, I'm a Jew, to the Greek, I'm a Greek. There's a missiological trajectory behind all of this. That's what makes it so relevant even today. It's timeless. Can I plug my new book? Since I never plug my books, do you always get on my case because I never plug my books? You've got to do a bunch for us. You've got to plug your new book. You've got to tell us what we should call this episode. You have to sing a song. And then Judson right behind you. And you have to put this all in a graphic so that we can post in our members' community so they know what the heck you're talking about. So yesterday I finally uploaded this book that I've been working on for a year on 1 Corinthians 11. And this actually fits our topic very well. That's the chapter of the head coverings, the veils. Yeah. And it's just caused endless fights, endless fights. I had this idea from Preaching Acts, which was like, I think we're missing something. Because as soon as Paul leaves Corinth in Acts, I think it's 18, something like that, he leaves Corinth and then Luke has this throwaway verse. It's like nobody's life verse in the world. And it's like when Paul got to Centuria, he cut his hair because of a vow. And you're like, why do I need to know that Paul went to a barber? okay so if you just take it backwards all of a sudden you go well that means he had long hair when he was at corinth but wait a minute didn't he just tell the corinthians in first corinthians 11 don't you know it's a disgrace for a man to have long hair but i had a long hair the whole time i was there nobody ever makes that connection yeah ever and so i'm like well what in the world does that mean? So my whole theory now is that 1 Corinthians it's grounded a couple of verses in good theology but almost all the rest of it is pure sarcasm. He's being sarcastic to these people because they're idiots. Nothing that he says in this book about these people is positive. Nothing. So all of a sudden for like 14 verses I'm supposed to think that Paul is like super excited about how great they are and then he immediately switches and goes back to how terrible they are? No. I actually think that we're reading it totally wrong and that 1 Corinthians 11, that head covering thing, is the height and pinnacle of all sarcasm in the entire book. And there's a lot of sarcasm in 1 Corinthians. So I say this because it's actually relevant to what we're talking about. Because remember how a couple of chapters later he talks about how we look through a glass darkly? Kind of a famous verse in Corinth. Well, so if you go up to the Acropolis at the outset of Corinth, they worshipped Aphrodite. And there was a statue of Aphrodite where she was staring at herself in a shield, just like that, like narcissists. She was totally obsessed with herself. And so I'm kind of arguing that these people were acting in the way Paul is writing this and talking sarcastically. They're acting like the goddess that's up on the hill. She's obsessed with herself. They're obsessed with their appearances. And meanwhile, they couldn't care less how they acted in worship. and so i'm going to be as sarcastic and snarky as i can possibly be because you people deserve it and need to learn a lesson so that's my new book it's called raising hair i put it up on amazon oh dude you're my wheelhouse dude raising hair r-a-z-i-n-g so tearing down hair not rabbit and not not as in trouble but it's a play on it but it's hair that's coming off your head So cutting your hair. If you couldn't like Paul anymore, he's a fan of sarcasm, and he had just exceptional lettuce, obviously. Probably second to Jesus, obviously. But, I mean, in the New Testament, it's Paul's lettuce, dude. He just. His lettuce was great because. Then he chopped it off just to spite people. What a guy. Yeah. It was probably. I love this, too. I would say. Where is the book, Doug? You say his hair is a little better than Walton Goggins, right, Luke? You've already said that. You recycled this joke today. Hey, they don't know about this joke. And none of the listeners. Yeah, I do. I've heard it now twice today. You said that to me, I think. Is this book on Amazon, Doug? Yeah, it's just Amazon. Go to Amazon. Raising Hair. R-A-Z-I-N-G. Can you tell our listeners about your, I don't know if you want to or not, but about looking for a building. Maybe there's some rich, fancy man in your neck of the woods that's got a building. Yeah, thanks, Nate. So we've been in a building for 15 years. We've been renting. It's actually the church that sent us out. We had to go back there in kind of an emergency when Muslims bought the building we were renting before that. We were kicked out within a week. So we've had a great relationship with them, but they dwindled down to about 10 people. and so they decided to rejuvenate their church but they didn't tell us anything about what they're doing until after the fact and so they came to us and said we're sorry but you have to be out by summer well two weeks later we were then told no you have 50 days to get out which would put us at february 22nd and so we got 80 to 100 people that come to the church and and so we're you know Denver is as bad as Nashville in terms of prices. It's impossible to find anything that's under a million dollars that we could even fit in. We can't be in a house because we're too big. So we're in that sweet spot for this is just a nightmare. So, yeah, I mean, we're praying like crazy, but we're probably going to end up starting some sort of a GoFundMe or something like that. It'll be a different version than that. But, yeah, if anybody knows anything or has a lot of money that they want to give to a guy, a church, I don't know what you want to do but throw that out there to the blurry verse see if we get back at the very least we would covet your prayers so we can find something and be able to afford it because we don't know if we'll be able to do that or not sorry Doug it's hard it's not been fun Doug your turn what do we got going on in the Burton Beyond the Institute of Biblical Anthropology of course still has course programs that people can take classes from and Doug and I just finished a monumental project I only got it done guys let's go books it's going to be two books as Doug put it third book about writing those books because of all the it's been a real testing trial for sure but I've Now I can also start to finish up some half-finished projects, and one of those is going to be a collection of essays that deal with what I'm trying to do with the Institute. You know, addressing the supernatural concerns of the day at this nexus point where, you know, theology and history and anthropology and archaeology kind of meet, and Doug's part of that. he's a fellow of the institute but yeah of course my Bobitron article for Stranger Theology dropped today and really excited to be part of that that's going to be we're excited to have you well I'm honored thank you for having me yeah me too I love you guys I love this this is awesome do we have any potential date for the Serpent Mound books? Or are we looking at like summer? We're looking at probably October. October? Okay. So it's going to be Defender Publishing that publishes it. If they want it, I think they will. We'll have to just blow that out of the water when it comes out. We're going to do a subversive version of that book. And we're going to release it here. We call it The Dragon of Damascus and Draco's Doom. Ours is Damascus the Dragon. That's interesting to you. And the Doom of Draco We've got a couple books coming out as well Well dudes, appreciate it Thanks again for contributing to Stranger Theology As well For part of our show, man You guys have just been Brothers And fellows On the Council of Blurry Which is right where we want you Yeah, we'll keep going And we'll put this one out Soon I kind of want to edit this like the old school days Give it the old flair Do it Nate Auto tune Jed's vocals Don't need to They're perfect Alright guys Alright boys Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.